


All Is Well (It's Only Blood)

by enigma731



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 14:26:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1188570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some lives you sacrifice without question, to protect yourself and your mission. And then there are the ones you will always risk <em>everything</em> for, if there’s even the smallest chance of getting them back. </p><p>(A story loosely based on the Winter Soldier trailer/speculation.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Is Well (It's Only Blood)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TaleWeaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWeaver/gifts).



> For the prompt: _Suppose Valentine’s day occurred during Captain America 2? Clint and Natasha are separated during Valentine’s Day because of the Winter Soldier mission, and Steve lends a helping hand of some kind._
> 
> Also loosely inspired by [this](http://enigma731.tumblr.com/post/75456391983) moment, which for the sake of fic I’m assuming is set at some point after Steve and Natasha get their asses kicked in an early fight. 
> 
> Thank you to [andibeth82](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82) for cheerleading and beta, and to [samalander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander) for thinky thoughts and encouragement.

The motel Natasha chooses in Alexandria is tiny, grungy, and smells damp in a way that reminds Steve of the barracks during the rainy winter months. As bolt-holes go, he’s had worse, he supposes, especially considering that in the past couple hours they’ve managed to lose their ride, most of their weapons, and any semblance of tactical advantage. It’s been a long time since he’s felt quite so helpless in a fight, the shock of it bringing back memories of alleyways in Brooklyn, of battling his own lungs for breath. 

Natasha leaves the drugstore where they’ve stopped for first-aid supplies a few hundred feet ahead of him, melting into the crowd as Steve follows. He waits a block up as he watches her duck inside the motel, trying to look nonchalant with his hands full of flowers and the cheap heart-shaped chocolates he’s bought to draw attention away from the blood spreading under his shirt. 

“Room 216,” comes her voice through the comm in his ear after what feels like an impossibly long few minutes. 

He doesn’t wait to be told twice, just squares his shoulders and closes the distance between himself and the motel doorway through which she’s vanished. There’s a little reception desk in the lobby with a bored-looking clerk fiddling with her phone, and for a moment Steve wonders if he’s going to have to stop and explain himself, going to have to play the sort of deception game he’s still not very good at on his own. He holds up the flowers when the clerk looks in his direction, though, shrugging helplessly, and the woman lets him pass without a word. 

“Happy Valentine’s day,” he tells Natasha, when she comes to the door, holding out the flowers in an attempt at humor he doesn’t really feel. 

She gives him a look, hard-edged business and something else, something softer. “Lose the flowers. The chocolates I might consider, if things get really dire.”

Steve sighs and drops the flowers into the trashcan next to the door as he steps past her. They’re nothing more than a prop for his makeshift cover--her idea, actually--but still he feels a little twinge of something like regret in discarding beautiful things unenjoyed, an echo of protest from his artist brain that refuses to be fully quieted even in the midst of everything else. He hands Natasha the pack of chocolates and then pauses again, unsure of what to do first now that he’s without immediate threat, without backup and without an objective. 

“Think I’ll wash up,” he says finally, when she makes no move to direct him. He’s used to being in action with Natasha, fighting at her side, carrying out a protocol or parrying her sometimes-relentless sense of humor. But now she’s uncharacteristically subdued, seeming as mired down in her own thoughts as he is in his. 

“Need anything from this?” asks Natasha, holding up the first-aid kit she’s purchased. 

Steve shakes his head without bothering to take stock of his injuries--what he needs most right now is a moment to regroup, to figure out what’s going on in his head before he can move forward. 

“In a minute,” he tells her, crossing the tight space into the bathroom and shutting the door so he can lean against it. 

Standing still, he’s starting to feel the full impact of the morning, of losing a fight, of being alone in a way he hasn’t felt since waking up from the ice. It still strikes him, sometimes, how easily he’s learned to ignore injuries, grown accustomed to cuts, bruises, and even the occasional fracture registering as nothing more than nuisances, as though his body was never a fragile thing, never something that held him back. Today is worse than usual, though, his neck and back aching from the impact of the car turning over, his ears ringing with the echoes of explosions and gunfire. The worst is the stab wound just below his ribs on his left side, the blood starting to dry sticky where it’s plastered the thin fabric of his shirt to his skin. He’s relatively certain the knife hasn’t punctured anything vital, but it’s a painful cut, the reminder of the blade biting into him bitterly with every renewed jostle. 

Forcing himself to move again, Steve shrugs out of his jacket, folding it in half before laying it on the bathroom counter. The sink sputters a little when he turns it on, air in the plumbing lines making the water explode out in a way that rattles his nerves. Cupping his hands, he splashes some of it on his face, then pauses at the sight of his own reflection in the mirror--the road grit and gunpowder that cling to his clothes, the doubts he’s been trying to outrun since the moment they were forced to retreat. He’s grown accustomed to being surrounded by ghosts, to seeing Bucky’s face in crowds, in his dreams, among the new recruits. But it’s never been quite like _this_ , never with this same burning intensity which refuses to fade, refuses to succumb to the knowledge that it’s _impossible_. 

Stupid, he thinks, grabbing a rough towel and scrubbing it over his face. That’s how he’s managed to get stabbed, that half-second doubt that slowed his reflexes, paralyzed him for just long enough to nearly cost them everything. Hanging the towel back up, he tells himself that he needs to keep moving, that Natasha probably has injuries of her own he’ll need to assess.

She’s sitting on the edge of the bed when he makes his way back out into the main room, stripped down to her tank-top with the first-aid kit open beside her. She’s taken her gauntlets off, and for the first time, Steve notices the angry swelling around her right wrist, the nasty scrapes on both of her palms from where she must have hit the pavement without the usual protection of her gloves. There’s a burn on her temple, too, he can see now that she’s pulled her hair back, as well as a collection of nasty-looking welts running down the side of her neck, probably from scalding airborne debris. He’s willing to bet she has other injuries as well, ones she’s still keeping concealed. It’s strange, he thinks, seeing her visibly hurt; over the past year a large part of him has begun to see her as indestructible. 

“Does that need stitches?” asks Natasha, as he takes a gauze pad from the kit and soaks it in antiseptic before pulling up the hem of his shirt to press it against the cut.

Steve bites back a curse at the sting, tries to focus instead on what she’s asked, on the way she respects limits, doesn’t assume that she knows what he needs or how his body works. “Shouldn’t. Bandage is probably a good idea, though.”

She nods and fishes through the first-aid kit, coming up with more gauze and surgical tape. “Sit. Let me do it.”

He obeys without further question because he trusts her, and because he has to admit that reaching the cut to properly bandage on his own would be both painful and clumsy. “Okay. But only if I get to look at your wrist after.” Steve sucks in a breath as she starts taping down adhesive strips to hold the rough edges of his cut together. “You know how those work?”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Believe it or not, I’ve done my fair share of patching up partners in the field. Should I ask you the same?”

He exhales again slowly as she finishes with the adhesive strips and tapes the bandage down securely. “Believe it or not,” he parrots, “I’ve patched up my fair share of soldiers too.”

She meets his eyes for a long moment as she pulls back, holds his gaze intensely before nodding. He thinks he can see the instant when she decides to trust him with this, too, decides to reveal her weakness to him and let him carry her through it. 

“You’re not wrong,” she says, holding out her wrist for him to examine. “This is the worst. I don’t think it’s broken, though.”

Steve runs his thumb over the painfully warm surface of her arm, doesn’t miss the way her breath catches ever so slightly when he turns her hand palm-up in his and works another antiseptic pad over the shredded skin. It’s a strange feeling, being so acutely aware of her, and it makes him feel connected in a way he only now realizes he’s been missing. He works for a few minutes longer, taping up her sprain before turning to her other hand, before deciding that he has to be honest with her, has to let her know what’s still haunting him. 

“I saw his face,” he says finally, because those are the only words he can find to push past the uncertainty, the traitorous tightness in his chest. “The Winter Soldier.”

Natasha looks up so sharply that for a moment Steve thinks his hands have slipped and hurt her somehow. “And?”

“And--” He grabs for another swab, using the distraction to break away from her gaze as the rest of the words tumble out in a rush. “And I think I know him. I think--He’s a ghost, like you said. Someone I--lost--in the war. I know it’s impossible, but I saw it.” Steve looks down at the surface of the bed between them, squeezes his eyes shut as the onslaught of memories overcome his focus on the present--Bucky’s hand slipping away, the look of abject terror in his eyes, the sound of his voice as it faded against the howl of the wind rushing past. 

“Steve,” Natasha says loudly, and he’s jarred out of his thoughts by the rough feel of gauze against his skin as she rests her hand along the side of his jaw. “You with me?”

“Yes,” he manages, shaking himself. She’s been speaking, he realizes, but he’s missed whatever she’s said. “Sorry, what?”

“This person you think you saw,” says Natasha, and there’s still something there beneath the surface, something more that he still can’t place. “What was he to you? Clearly more than just a ghost.”

Steve exhales slowly and tries to figure out how to answer, how to keep himself from falling into the past again. “A friend. A friend I--loved. But he died. I watched him die, and I couldn’t stop it.”

“Well,” she says slowly, “I think the past couple of years have made a pretty damn good case for nothing being truly impossible.” She gives him the shadow of a smile. “What do you want to do, Cap?”

He sighs again. Natasha will be focused on their mission, on survival, on keeping more people from getting hurt. All the things he ought to want as well, only suddenly he’s not certain he can stick to the ideals that have always seemed to clear, not if there’s _any_ chance it might mean sacrificing Bucky again. “Bringing him in alive would be a risk.”

“Yes,” says Natasha. “So the question becomes--This friend, is he worth that to you?”

“I don’t follow,” says Steve, surprised by the question, unsure how to parse what he thinks she’s implying. 

“Every life has a value,” she says evenly, as if she might be talking about breaking a lock, about bullet trajectories. “Most of the time, a single person isn’t worth risking a job, or yourself. Most of the time, you let them die, if you want to finish the mission--save the majority, go on to do good another day. But some people--some people are worth your own life and more. Some people are worth everything. You’re lucky, if you’ve had someone like that in your life.”

“You and Barton?” he asks, the elusive glint of the tiny silver arrow around her neck not lost on him. 

She nods. “I think you know that I would die for him. I would do whatever it took. I would do it right now, if I knew where he was. If I knew that he needed it.”

Steve takes a breath, letting the reality of it settle over him for a moment. “I think I have to try.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” says Natasha. “That’s what _partners_ do.”

Steve thinks he’ll never find the proper words to express the enormity of gratitude he feels at that, so instead he moves a little closer on the edge of the bed and drapes an arm around her shoulders as she starts to shiver in the combination of humidity and air conditioning. Natasha doesn’t say anything else, just leans in and rests her head on his shoulder as the minutes slip by, while something a little like hope begins to uncurl itself in a place near his heart.


End file.
